Declaration of the Rights of Man
France's National Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
August 26, 1789
Rights Written for All of Humanity
On August 26, 1789, the National Constituent Assembly of France adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, one of the most influential political documents in history. The declaration was drafted in the weeks following the storming of the Bastille and drew heavily on Enlightenment philosophy, particularly the ideas of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as well as the American Declaration of Independence. It proclaimed that all men are born free and equal in rights, that the aim of political association is to preserve natural rights including liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression, and that sovereignty resides in the nation rather than in a monarch.
What the Declaration Said
The Declaration consisted of a preamble and 17 articles. It established that the law is the expression of the general will and that all citizens have the right to participate in making it. It guaranteed freedom of speech and religion, the presumption of innocence before the law, and protection against arbitrary arrest. It stated that taxes could only be levied with public consent. Many of these principles would become standard features of democratic constitutions around the world. The document's influence can be seen directly in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948, which built on its framework and extended it to include women explicitly, a group the 1789 declaration's language often excluded in practice.
A Foundation for Modern Rights
The Declaration of the Rights of Man was not immediately matched by reality. Women were largely excluded from its protections, as Olympe de Gouges forcefully argued in her 1791 Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen. Enslaved people in French colonies received no benefit from it until 1794, when France temporarily abolished slavery. Nevertheless, the declaration represented a radical break with the ancien régime's idea that rights and privileges were granted by a king. It established the idea that rights are natural, universal, and inalienable. That idea has been contested, expanded, and argued over ever since, but it forms the philosophical core of the human rights tradition that shapes international law today.